And you're defending something I wasn't attacking, "scientists". I'm saying it's all BS. Studies of everything can be done, and a hypothesis made--wala, we have science. So don't deify it. Science is overall a good thing, but some things can be assumed, can't they? Come out of the lab occasionally, and talk to people and you might get where I'm coming from.

There is not one reputable study that shows any benefit of taking any type of supplement. There is doubt that the body even processes them. Most likely you are just pissing them right back out.Vitamin supplements are the modern day snake oil...and at least that was typically alcohol based.

This is not science, this man is pumped up and dangerous, this is his paying for validating his own theories. ..We know, that children who are low in vitamin c and a, couldn't even survive an MMR vaccine. We killed half of the deficient Aborigine children in one "study". With the ubiquitous use of sun screen, we are seeing a re emergence of rickets..vaccinated children need extra b 12 and magnesium..to stop this will increase autism..this guy is not GOD no matter how much he thinks so.

BUT I'm supposed to get a vitamin B shot every month. I think I only do it because it feels like you're a liiiiiittle bit high.

Just drink a Spike energy drink.

33,333% B12! The 350mg of caffeine will help you feel a little bit high too.

You gotta try the shot.

It's like doing a teeeeeny bit of blow that lasts all day. I actually backed-up a shiatton of crap from my laptop. I mowed AND edged the lawn. My essay was farking fantastic and I vacuumed parts of my house I didn't even know were there.

Vitamins help, IF YOU ARE ACTUALLY DEFICIENT in them. If you're a malnourished African toddler with rickets, pellagra, scurvy, and beri-beri, then yes you should take some vitamins if you're normally eating 1 meal every other day. In the first world, you have to be on a pretty damn Draconian diet to get to that level.

There's a difference between supplementing to rectify a deficiency and augmenting with massive doses of vitamins well beyond what the body requires. The article clearly did not condemn supplementing to make up deficiencies.

See You Next Tuesday:Uh, this article is about massive overdoses of what are YES, IMPORTANT THINGS TO HAVE. Supplements. There's no way in hell you even bothered to read it. Vitamin C does not cure cancer. Sorry.

BolshyGreatYarblocks:Do the vitamins cause cancer per se, or are there carcinogenic food dye additives like Yellow 5 on many or most pills? Try regulating the dyes -- present on or in a lot of food products -- before you lead a lynch mob on alternative medicine.

The article doesn't imply that vitamins cause cancer. What is discussed (near the end of the article) is that the evil free radicals (oxidants) may have an actual purpose other than to destroy DNA and make you look like Ghandi after a 3-week coke bender. The theory is that free radicals help destroy bacteria and prevent the formation of new cancer cells.

What is implied by the article is that, by taking massive doses of antioxidants, you're upsetting a balance that makes it where those oxidants can't do their job, thereby allowing cancerous cells to form and take over. The net effect would be a higher cancer rate. The antioxidants don't necessarily cause cancer, but they set up a situation where cancer can grow unchecked.

See You Next Tuesday:thamike: See You Next Tuesday: Uh, this article is about massive overdoses of what are YES, IMPORTANT THINGS TO HAVE. Supplements. There's no way in hell you even bothered to read it. Vitamin C does not cure cancer. Sorry.

Cheer down, fella.

Do you not see the irony that you are mocking Jenny The Scientist while simultaneously throwing in with her?

No, I don't. How am i supposed to see something you're presuming from an obvious joke I made on the internet?

BolshyGreatYarblocks:Do the vitamins cause cancer per se, or are there carcinogenic food dye additives like Yellow 5 on many or most pills? Try regulating the dyes -- present on or in a lot of food products -- before you lead a lynch mob on alternative medicine.

Before you go off on some diatribe, try reading the article. They put forth a theory on why mega doses of antioxidants might be the cause of an increase in the risk of getting cancer. Jeez, reading is not that hard.

100% of people who take vitamins die! Scientific studies aim to prove a foregone conclusion. Most supplement users are: Older adults, who are rarely healthier than younger adults, unhealthy people who want an adjunct to science based medicine, and unhealthy people who rely on woo. The % of genetically healthy adults who eat nutritionally optimal diets and get enough exercise is statistically small enough to count as zero. Plus, humans are incapable of self-reporting behavior accurately. Studies are worthless unless performed, analyzed and reported on by unbiased experts. The amount of helpful information that filters through all that is extremely small.

There are so many exceptions that need to be made to this article that it is not even funny.

For example, until someone gets cancer, antioxidants are good for preventing cancer. However, much of chemotherapy is intended to create oxidants in cancer cells, so if you have cancer, you absolutely do not want to take antioxidants.

After some years of contending with acidic vitamin C, L-ascorbic acid, which can cause unpleasant side effects in megadoses, someone got the bright idea of buffering it, so people could take more. However, the problem remained that it is a water soluble vitamin, so is rapidly excreted from the body, which is why they took the megadoses in the first place. Finally, not too long ago, someone figured out that the vitamin could be combined with lecithin, making it fat soluble, so it would remain in the body much longer. And so you need to take far less for its good effects.

And that's just vitamin C. Other vitamins, other rules. For example, it is easy to overdose on vitamin A; vitamin D is not a vitamin, it is a hormone, and deficiency is common; the B vitamins work better together, and minerals need to be balanced with each other as well; and much depends on the individual, their work, habits, diet, intestinal flora, and medicines they take.

Finally, despite problems with Linus Pauling, the man, he did create a vitamin research institute that is just that. It does research, not advocacy, and is the premier vitamin research organization in the world.

PacificaFitz:I love how this article explains almost an entire century of evidence that vitamins are bad for you and yet people still defend them. People still say "it's ok to take them when....". It is an unregulated quack system set to make people extremely rich at the cost of peoples lives. For the longest time smoking cigarettes was recommended to people as a stress reliever.

My parents are people that are convinced that they are making themselves healthy with whatever the vitamin of the week is. Every time a new thing comes up they try to convince everyone that they NEED to take it, and when that vitamin is proven to be nothing more than a sugar pill or worse they move on to the next. I'm a smoker and I look down on you pill popping ignorant fools.

you meant how mega doses of vitamins are often bad for you, right? Because that is what the article is about and only an idiot would try to claim all vitamins are bad for you. Only an idiot...

oukewldave:There are times when vitamins are good for you. For example, if you are dieting, they are a good supplement.

Sure, but I think the main issue there is that people think dieting means "not eating enough nutrients to support health." You can get 100% of RDA of all vitamins and minerals while keeping calories lower than your BMR. It's probably the most effective way to do it, too.

KawaiiNot:Not all vitamins are of good quality. The vitamins I take cost a lot. Whenever I forget to take them for a few days I feel like crap & tired. No matter how healthy I eat, I still need the vitamins.

Modern food has less vitamins than in the past due to poor soil quality, mass corporate farming, not being vine-ripened, long shipping distances, etc.

This is exactly what a naturopath told me. Then he proceeded to try to sell me $200.00 worth of "exclusive" vitamins. I can't afford that!

In the United States, overdose exposure to all formulations of "vitamins" was reported by 62,562 individuals in 2004 (nearly 80%(~78%, n=48,989) of these exposures were in children under the age of 6), leading to 53 "major" life-threatening outcomes and 3 deaths(2 from Vitamins - D and E; 1 from polyvitaminic type formula, with iron and no fluoride).

Probably not from eating too many vegetables but taking supplements. Also see Dietary Reference Intake for Tolerable upper intake levels.

Skeptigal:100% of people who take vitamins die! Scientific studies aim to prove a foregone conclusion. Most supplement users are: Older adults, who are rarely healthier than younger adults, unhealthy people who want an adjunct to science based medicine, and unhealthy people who rely on woo. The % of genetically healthy adults who eat nutritionally optimal diets and get enough exercise is statistically small enough to count as zero. Plus, humans are incapable of self-reporting behavior accurately. Studies are worthless unless performed, analyzed and reported on by unbiased experts. The amount of helpful information that filters through all that is extremely small.

Sudo_Make_Me_A_Sandwich:Supplements aren't necessarily bad for you. Lots of people have diets deficient in major nutrients, like most people get about 1/2 the recommended amount of potassium (which is about 9 bananas worth). What's bad is getting 500% of the RDA of those nutrients.

Y'know, I hear this kind of stuff, like "you are only getting a fraction of the calcium you need," so I went and checked my bloodwork. Got my iron checked, calcium levels, magnesium...everything I could check for, and the doctor threw in a few others.

I'm smack in the middle of them all except for iron, so I take a vitamin and I'm good.

Reading this thread demonstrates to me how many people are so gullible to marketing.

Normally intelligent people continue to throw their money away on snake oil and woo, generally with they time-worn excuse "well, it's not doing any harm" or some anecdotal evidence rather than hard, scientific numbers.

Doctors, the supposedly scientific thinking individuals will give in to patients wanting antibiotics for a viral infection, blood-pressure pills and some will actually refer their patients to chiropractors, acupuncture or some other scam treatment.

I took vitamins, ONCE. I really don't know how anybody could do them regularly. They gave me a headache and made me sick to my stomach, then I got dizzy and almost passed out. I started getting freaked out, but luckily I had a sitter who was able to calm me down a little bit. I still spent the next 15 hours of my life curled in in bed, sweating and hallucinating that the carpet was a writhing mass of flesh eating maggots. I couldn't sleep for a day and a half, and then I crashed hard. I didn't feel normal for a couple of weeks after. I can't even imagine what it could have been like for me if I'd taken a vitamin shot instead.

WASHINGTON, DC-Citing years of frustration over their advice being misunderstood, misrepresented or simply ignored, America's foremost experts in every field collectively tendered their resignation Monday.

"Despite all our efforts to advise this nation, America still throws out its recyclables, keeps its guns in unlocked cabinets where children have easy access, eats three times as much red meat as is recommended, watches seven hours of TV per day, swims less than 10 minutes after eating, and leaves halogen lights on while unattended," said Dr. Simon Peavy, vice-president of the National Association of Experts. "Since you don't seem to care about things you don't understand, screw you. We quit."

"My final piece of expert advice," Peavy added, "is that all of you people should just go fark yourselves."

AMonkey'sUncle:A recent blood test showed I was deficient in vitamin D. Vitamin D is more critical to bone mass than calcium.

Good to know I shouldn't supplement with Vitamin D.

When I need medical advice as an adult, I'll be sure to consult a pediatrician.

Let's go with that substitute for "thought" that you use. Using YOUR alleged mind, and your alleged way of "thinking" (using "thinking" extremely loosely), according to the way you "think" (if you actually do think), everybody should dose themselves willy-nilly with antibiotics, regardless of whether or not they have an infection, everyone should pop antidepressants and adderall, regardless of whether or not they have the associated disorders. Yup, according to your brain-dead, monumentally stupid substitute for thinking, that is what people should do.

I'll spell it out, since you're such an idiot that your own DNA weeps for you:

Article points out that it is useless or even harmful for HEALTHY people to dose themselves with vitamin supplements.A complete and utter farkwit (aka "you") is so stupid, so useless, and such a drag on the gene pool that said farkwit decides that the article says "never take vitamin supplements no matter what, at all".If that farkwit is also not a filthy liar and hypocrite worth only of painful death and being thrown to coyotes, that farkwit will apply the principle to all other substances.

As I already pointed out, you are so stupid that your DNA weeps for you.

When I hit 40 I thought it would probably be a good idea to start taking a one-a-day vitamin supplement. I purchased a bottle and took one each day as suggested, then I started noticing my hair falling out, with an alarming amount of hair collecting in the drain grate after each shower.

I didn't connect the two at first. It was only after a few times that I ran out of vitamins and my hair stopped falling out, and then purchasing more and having my hair start falling out again, that I was able to conclude the vitamins were the cause. At first, I rejected it as a coincidence, but after taking and refraining from taking vitamins there was no doubt, vitamins were the cause of my hair loss.

I got on line and did some research to see what I could find. The problem is a bunch of website promote vitamins as one way of stopping hair loss, and in some cases that is apparently true. But if you shift through the sites you will evidentially find that vitamins A and D, when consumed at higher levels can cause toxicity which can result in hair loss.

I have always ate a healthy diet consisting a reasonable proportions of various foods that apparently already have enough A or D. When I took the one-a-day supplement it rose either one of both of those vitamin levels to toxic levels and caused my hair to start falling out.

The horrible part is after quitting the supplement my hair has not regrown where it fell out (but at least it has stopped falling out). As a result, I not only a much higher hairline, I also have a very thin not-quite-bald patch about the size of a quarter that is still there.

I just wish vitamin toxicity information was more prevalent, as it could have helped me determine the cause of my hair loss much earlier and I would have a better head of hair as a result.

OhioUGrad:notmtwain: AMonkey'sUncle: A recent blood test showed I was deficient in vitamin D. Vitamin D is more critical to bone mass than calcium.

Good to know I shouldn't supplement with Vitamin D.

When I need medical advice as an adult, I'll be sure to consult a pediatrician.

He says in the book on page 103, "Of 51,000 new supplements on the market, four might be of value for otherwise healthy people: omega 3 fatty acids to prevent heart disease, calcium and vitamin D in post-menopausal women to prevent bone thinning..."

// Cheer up, Grandma and don't forget to take your calcium pills.

// And the fourth was "folic acid during pregnancy to prevent birth defects."

And yet, just recently there were several articles about how those supplements don't work...

What ever happened to just doing what you want and what makes you feel good?I take a multivitamin, I take St Johns Wort (they work), I take Milk Thistle (blood tests have proven that works (for me at least)), and I take Kelp (blood tests have also proven that works for me).

Pay someone enough, they'll conduct studies and come to any conclusion you want them to.

/doctors also hate alternative medicines because they aren't able to be patented so they aren't profitable for the pharm. companies that line their pockets....big surprise.

Remember, no matter how stupid you are, you can ALWAYS fall back to conspiracy theories!